Merry Christmas

We hope you all had a great and relaxing Christmas!  We didn’t take very many pictures this year on Christmas but here are a few for you to enjoy. 

Austin opening the last door on the countdown.

Austin opening his presents/stocking.

  

Daisy enjoying the presents from Uncle Brent.

Rajah eyeing the present from Papa and Mom.

Bo eating the candy cane from his stocking.

Bronx stayed with us for the holiday, here he is enjoying his Christmas presents.

Chris, Janelle and Piper Rockin’

Merry Magical Christmas

For vacation this year, we took a trip to Disney World. We spent a day at each of the parks and spent time relaxing in the pool, visiting the outlets and just generally resting. It was a nice vacation and good way to start the holiday.

And the winners are...

#1 - Taylor - Best Landscaping
#2 - Piper - Good try kid
#3 - Chris - Best Structure
#4 - Austin - Most Edible
#5 - Janelle - Best Overall - good choice people =).
#6 - Allison - Best Landscaping Runner Up, Most Edible Runner Up and Overall runner up

Gingerbread House Contest

Please pick a winner from the below houses in each of the following catagories.
1. Best House (structure)
2. Best Landscape
3. Edibility
4. Best Overall

Holiday Hog Roast

This weekend was the annual holiday hog roast. About 50 people from the mill and their families filter throug Steve and Kerri's yard during the day and evening. We watch football, have a big camp fire, bouncy house for the kids (that turns into races for the adults, Brent and I lost out to Mike in the championship round). The main event is a HUGE meal with a roasted hog, literally, and tons of BBQ chicken.

Of course we didn't take any pictures during the day with the large group there, but here are a few of around the campfire.

















The hog is roasted under the card board area show below. A pit is dug and cynderblocks laid in it with walls of cynderblocks. They make coals out of a fire in a metal drum and then shovel them into the pit, lay the hog above the coals and seal off with carboard.

Bowling

Everyone....the wait is over! We now have a bowling alley in town. Yes, we are getting to be a big deal here in small town Georgia. Today a bowling alley, soon the Oscar's will be held here.


Wild Bill, Alice, Erica, Sasak and Auzzy

















Libby helping the youngin's bowl for the first time
















Being in the bowling alley reminded me of the Corvallis gang. We haven't bowled since the Lane's on 9th street would take up HOURS of our lives on a weekend day. Since kick ball and softball are done for a few months we plan on joining the bowling league so be prepared for that in the future.

Testing Andy’s Program

 Andy introduced me to Windows Live Writer so I am posting some random pictures to test it out.  So far I really like it, makes posting pictures MUCH faster and easier.  I would recommend downloading it from the link above if you blog often.

 

 

We don’t take a lot of video, we don’t have a video camera so it is usually when we accidentally turn our camera to the video function, but I wanted to test this.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a group of friends over for Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. Along with all the traditional food, Austin had his heart set on doing a fried turkey. So we had a 20 pound roasted turkey and a 12 pound friend turkey for 8 people (2 of them children and 1 who doesn't eat birds, especially after cleaning it).


From Left to Right: Brent, Bronx, Piper, Austin, Janelle, Daisy, Erica, Taylor, Allison, Chris. Not pictured: Bo and Murphy outside playing

















Austin checking the temperature of the oil to make sure it doesn't get too hot.

















Turkey frying is very dangerous and the safety and health manager at our corporate office put out a risk assessment of the task just before the holiday. Chris reviewed the risk assessment with us all before we started. It was really Austin's activity, with Chris helping but we all made sure they were safe out there.

















Most of the day was spent in front of the Wii either playing Rock Band (as shown) or the New Mario Brothers.



















We had a very relaxing and enjoyable day. Wish we could have seen more of our family and friends!

Holiday Parades

The start of the holiday season is brought about by parades everywhere. The first Holiday parade was this past Saturday in Rincon. Austin and I did our part to give out paper towels to the adults at the parade in the GP float. It is amazing how crazy people get for free paper towels or tp. We are the only float for the adults.





Image provided by Brent.

Go Blazers

While in Atlanta this week for work, Katie, Mike and I decided to take advantage of being in the city and go see a basketball game. The Atlanta Hawks defeated the Portland Trail Blazers in over time. It was a fun game to watch.

An Island Called Daufuskie

To celebrate my 30th birthday coming up on the 11th Austin set up a weekend on Daufuskie with a group of our friends. He rented a beautiful huge house on the 5th hole of the only golf course still functioning. A little history on Daufuskie.....it is an island that was secluded from modern life until the past 20 or 30 years. If you are into reading I would recommend Pat Conroy's “The River is Wide.” He wrote the book about his experiences on Daufuskie as the local school teacher in the 70's, where the children on the island didn't even know they lived in the United States of America. This island is between the main land of South Carolina and Hilton Head Island, but since it has no bridge it remains isolated. In the 80's an amazing resort was built right on the beach, with multiples golf courses, a pool center, tennis courts, restaurant and hotel and conference center. The houses on the golf courses are privately own so they are still there, but just over a year ago the resort went bankrupt and shutdown everything but one golf course. It is all still there and functional, just NO ONE around. The title of this post, "An Island Called Daufuskie" is also a book about the island, but I haven't read that book.
So back to this past weekend...Austin rented a house on the 5th hole just up from the beach and pool area and we spent the weekend riding around the island on golf carts going to one of the 2 local establishments for food, swimming and playing football on the beach, playing board games, sitting around a camp fire with the locals at night, and watching sunrises and sunsets over the water. It was a perfect weekend.

It is getting hard to add comments to each picture so I'll just let you enjoy the pictures.






















This is what a horse shoe crap looks like if anyone is interested.






















Brent, Austin and I took Friday off and went on the morning Ferry, where the rest of the group met up with us that evening.